High school students have continued grassroots initiatives to organize walkouts and protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since their first nationwide protests on January 30.

At the same time, school authorities, state and local politicians, and police are trying to intimidate these teenagers and their supporters with threats of investigations, suspensions, and even criminal charges.

As an article in the February 13, 2026, Fresno Bee reports (reproduced below), police officials in Clovis, California, announced they would seek “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” charges against adults who accompanied student protesters to ensure their safety. Such charges, which have provoked debates, can result in up to a one-year jail sentence and a $1,000 fine, with far more serious potential implications. Police have used facial recognition cameras to record and identify protesters and their chaperons.

Student protesters are seeking to make use of legal precedents to defend their right to freedom of speech in face of such threats, as an article published in the February 15 New York Times (reproduced below) reports.

“Thomas Baughman, 17, said that a lot of students joined the walkout at his school at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center in Dallas to express their political feelings at a time when they still cannot vote,” the Times article noted.

“He and several classmates spent more than a week planning the protest, posting on Instagram and handing out pamphlets at school. They also reviewed their legal rights, Mr. Baughman said, including a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, that protected the free speech rights of students at school.”

We publish the articles below for the information of our readers. The headlines, subheads, text, and photos that follow are from the originals as published by the New York Times and the Fresno Bee.

— World-Outlook editors

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Students Across the U.S. Are Protesting ICE. Texas Wants to Punish Their Schools.

In dozens of states, students have staged walkouts over immigration enforcement. In Texas, they’re doing so despite threats from Gov. Greg Abbott.

By J. David Goodman, Mary Beth Gahan, and Callie Holtermann

David Goodman reported from Houston, Mary Beth Gahan from Dallas and Callie Holtermann from New York.

Feb. 15, 2026, New York Times

Students in more than three dozen states have walked out of class to protest the Trump administration’s deportation tactics in recent weeks, a wave of defiant demonstrations that continues as some officials have vowed to crack down.

Teenagers in Utah carried backpacks and bullhorns as they walked out of eight schools in Salt Lake County. In Maine, students in mittens convened on a bridge over the Kennebec River. Scores of students were seen stopping highway traffic in Maryland. Classmates at a high school in Sunnyside, Wash., lined a parking lot carrying hand-drawn posters. “We are skipping our lesson to teach you one,” read one.

But in Texas, where more than half of all public-school students are Hispanic, Republican leaders have tried teaching a very different lesson of their own, threatening students, teachers and school districts with severe consequences for taking part in demonstrations.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has suggested that state funding could be stripped from school districts and that students who are disorderly during protests should be arrested. The Texas Education Agency has warned that districts found to have facilitated walkoutscould be taken over by the state.

“Schools and staff who allow this behavior should be treated as co-conspirators,” Mr. Abbott said in a social media post last week, which focused on one walkout in Kyle, Texas, outside of Austin.

Yet despite the threats from state officials — and the pleas to students from many school administrators — the protests over immigration enforcement did not stop.

On Feb. 10, there were at least 10 walkouts at schools in the Dallas area, with hundreds of students participating. Protest organizers said they were aware of the potential consequences but remained determined to speak out against the tactics of federal agents and the killings of two people in Minnesota.

“It is important especially right now that students understand that they have the right and the privilege to speak up for what they believe in,” said Cat Krankota, a 16-year-old student who helped organize a walkout at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas.

For Paola Ramirez, 16, the protest was personal. Her cousin was deported this year after a check-in at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas, leaving his wife and 5-year-old son to move in with Paola’s family.

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“I see injustices happening everywhere,” Ms. Ramirez said.

Thomas Baughman, 17, said that a lot of students joined the walkout at his school at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center in Dallas to express their political feelings at a time when they still cannot vote.

He and several classmates spent more than a week planning the protest, posting on Instagram and handing out pamphlets at school. They also reviewed their legal rights, Mr. Baughman said, including a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, that protected the free speech rights of students at school.

But Mr. Abbott, a lawyer and former state supreme court justice, has said that the students do not understand that there are limits to free speech under the Constitution.

“You don’t have freedom of speech to say and act any way you want to, anywhere you want to, anytime you want to,” the governor said at a news conference Feb. 4, adding that the “free speech of students does not include leaving the school to go protest.”

Other Republican state leaders have also bristled at the student demonstrations. In Oklahoma, 10 Republican lawmakers expressed concern that the protests “appear to target law enforcement officers and federal agents who are carrying out lawful duties.” And Florida’s education commissioner warned school superintendents that protests could lead to discipline.

Leaders in Texas appear to have gone the furthest in trying to tamp them down. Civil rights advocates said it might be too much.

“What the state is threatening, including school takeovers, goes beyond routine punishment,” the legal director at the ACLU of Texas, Adriana Piñon, said in a statement. “The state is threatening drastic and severe consequences for peaceful speech that could amount to retaliation, which is unconstitutional.”

The Texas Education Agency did not respond to a request for how many students and teachers had been disciplined in relation to the walkouts, or whether any school districts were identified as facilitating protests and thus targeted for funding cuts.

Walkouts have long been a common form of student protest, including in Texas. In recent years, students have walked out to protest school district policies or the actions of the federal government. There were similar walkouts over immigration enforcement last year.

Mr. Baughman, in Dallas, said his fellow students expected their walkout Tuesday to be handled as others had been, with organizers informing school officials and getting permission for their plans. Instead, because of the threats from state leaders, he said the protest took place without the endorsement of school officials.

In the Houston area, students at several schools walked out last week after school leaders warned them of potential consequences, including suspension or being barred from extracurricular activities.

“On the day of the protest and the day before, our principal got on the speaker with the same message about the potential for disciplinary action,” said Mallika Mohan, a 17-year-old junior at Bellaire High School, who covered the protest at her school as a student journalist. “He also sent this out in an email, twice.”

In a letter to the governor on Monday, more than three dozen Democratic members of the Texas House asked Mr. Abbott for guidance on how schools should respond to and manage the walkouts.

“We can all agree that students possess constitutional free speech rights — a principle that the governor and the Texas Education Agency have repeatedly affirmed,” the Texas Democrats wrote, pointing to Mr. Abbott’s support for the free speech rights of student clubs. Mr. Abbott has pushed schools to allow students to create chapters of Club America, a conservative political club for high school students started by Charlie Kirk.

The threats have worried many parents and students, including some of who opted not to join walkouts at their schools over fear of what disciplinary action could do to their academic record.

“My kids have worked very hard as students and all openly expressed their concerns for safety and consequences of the walkout,” said Jessica Zelaya, who has three children in high school in Mesquite, Texas, south of Dallas.

Opinions are divided among parents on Facebook forums over whether the school could be expected to force students to stay inside.

“You can’t stop a student from walking out of the classroom,” said Monette DeBaun Stransom, whose daughter joined the walkout on Tuesday at Booker T. Washington. “If they want to cut class and go play video games or do whatever, you can’t stop them.”

Ms. Stransom said she felt comfortable encouraging her daughter to participate because she and several other parents were walking near the route the students took as they protested outside of the school.

“I talked with her about her First Amendment rights. I reminded her to walk only on the sidewalk and to not obstruct traffic,” Ms. Stransom said. “I said, ‘If a policeman asks you a question, you have the right to remain silent. But you have a First Amendment right to peacefully protest.’”

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‘Absolutely ridiculous’ that adults at Clovis ICE protest might be charged? What experts say

By Thaddeus Miller

February 13, 2026, 3:53 PM, The Fresno Bee

In the wake of demonstrations from area high-schoolers, multiple law enforcement agencies in Clovis and at least one other area city warned that adults involved could face criminal charges — what some have argued was an unnecessary threat to free speech.

Clovis police said recordings from a special surveillance vehicle that cased the protestors and that they call Camera on Wheels, or their COW vehicle, and about 500 surveillance cameras, could be used as evidence.

The surveillance of peaceful protesters is troubling, according to Saira Hussain, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on free speech and digital privacy.

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous,” she told The Fresno Bee.

Whether any adults are charged, the “mission creep” of cameras used by police is concerning, Hussain said.

“If people know that law enforcement is trying to obtain video footage of protected First Amendment activity like a protest in order to identify people and then charge them criminally, of course, that’s going to have a chilling effect,” she said. “That is exactly what the First Amendment seeks to protect against.”

Clovis, Fresno, and other area teenagers held anti-ICE protests over the past week as they marched off-campus, held signs, and chanted during school hours. Many did so without permission from their school districts.

Clovis police made a joint announcement with Clovis Unified School District late Wednesday that police would seek charges for adults — two so far — they suspected of a misdemeanor crime of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Sanger police followed suit the next day with a similar declaration.

“Adults who encourage or assist minors in leaving campus during instructional hours, in violation of the Education Code, may face misdemeanor charges under California Penal Code section 272,” Sanger police said in a Facebook message.

The penal code cited by Clovis and Sanger police can commonly apply to parents arrested or charged over a minor’s chronic absenteeism or for an adult who provides alcohol to children, legal experts noted.

Fresno police, who monitor a city with the third-largest school district in the state in Fresno Unified, have not so far pursued any such delinquency cases, but they’re not off the table, according to Lt. Larry Bowlan.

“We will take appropriate action with adults or juveniles when committing crimes, but each of these incidents is looked at individually, and the appropriate course of action is taken based on whether the elements of a crime are met,” he said in an email to The Fresno Bee.

Clovis adults to face misdemeanor charges from protests

The Fresno County District Attorney’s Office had not received any cases related to adults at the protests as of Thursday, according to a spokesperson.

One adult near the protest in Clovis who spoke to The Bee said he and others accompanied the young people to watch over their safety. He said they were at times met by aggressive adult counter protestors.

Veteran defense attorney David Mugridge said the potential Clovis case against adults or parents at a student protest is uncommon and not one he’s seen in nearly 40 years practicing law. But it’s also not a “minor technicality,” he said.

Adults arriving to a protest and participating are not likely to have run afoul of the law, he said, but encouraging students to leave school or helping them to leave without permission could become a legal issue.

“They’re probably very well-intentioned,” he said. “Even very well-intentioned people need to follow the law.”

Handing out protest signs and water would likely not rise to the level of a violation, according to Roger Bonakdar, a trial attorney of two decades. If the adults told the high-schoolers to block the street or commit vandalism, then there would be a more clear violation.

“If these were adults, none of it would matter, right?” he said. “It’s because they’re children, and because you’re talking about a school day and taking them away from a school day and instruction that all this dialogue even exists.”

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